


The Sword and the Shield

by darkrosaleen



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Bloodplay, Dom/sub, Knifeplay, M/M, Painplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:50:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/pseuds/darkrosaleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A king is only as good as the sword in his knight's hand. A knight's sword is only as good as the devotion in his heart. See notes for warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sword and the Shield

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariadnes_string](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/gifts).



Shortly after meeting Ronan Lynch, Gansey falls madly in love with the friend of a girlfriend of a boy on the crew team. He pronounces her beauty the whole way home from the party, aware that Ronan is making faces in the passenger seat.

“Come on, you saw her. She looked like something out of a fairy tale! Hair as black as coal, skin as white as snow.”

“Yeah, yeah. Lips as red as blood.” Ronan’s face is sharp and distant in the glow from the stoplight. 

“How charming. I thought it was ‘red as roses.’” 

Ronan smiles. “Not when my dad tells it. You Protestants are uptight as fuck.” The light turns green, and Gansey drives through downtown Henrietta, making Ronan gag with ridiculous metaphors. 

The image sticks with Gansey, though. When he finally gets Jessica in the backseat of the Camaro, her wet, glossy lips look like blood in the dim light.

\--

When they finally let Ronan come home, he has trouble sleeping. It breaks Gansey’s heart to see tall, proud Ronan hunched over in the fraying armchair at Monmouth like a newborn bird, staring at the shadows with haunted eyes and jumping every time the old building makes a noise. Gansey feels bone-deep relief at being home, free from the nauseating smell of antiseptic and prodding nurses with questions it hurt to answer and the sickly white of Ronan’s skin under harsh fluorescent light. At the same time, he feels stretched thin with sorrow and anger and frustration. The realization that Ronan isn’t safe at Monmouth upsets Gansey in a way he can barely articulate.

He turns the radio to the local college station and lets Ronan sit next to him on the floor by the model, occasionally asking him to pass things or judge whether a building looks right. Just having him right there, speaking in monosyllables and leaning his weight against Gansey’s side, is such strong comfort that Gansey is in real danger of crying. 

When he’s too tired to keep working, Gansey sits up and cracks his neck. “Okay, my hands are starting to cramp. Ready to call it a night?”

Ronan worries the frayed hem of his tank, his face knotted with tension. “I don’t—it’s not that I think something bad will happen, but. Fuck.”

He’s scared. Gansey doesn’t blame him; he’s a little frightened of Ronan’s brain tonight, too.

“Can I do anything to help? My bed’s big enough, if you want to sleep out here.”

Ronan’s eyes go wide. Whatever he’s scared of, sharing a bed with Gansey would be worse. “No, I’ll be fine. I just.” He winds the shirt around his hands and stretches it out. “Know what, forget it. I’m being a pussy.” 

Ronan stands up, but Gansey grabs his ankle. “Hey. If there’s anything I can do to help, even if it sounds stupid, please tell me. I want to be useful.”

Ronan’s hands clench and release at his sides. “Could you, like, tell me to go to bed? Like I’ll be in trouble if I don’t.”

Gansey thinks for a moment. “Like you’re a kid?”

“Yeah, sure. Like I’ve been keeping you up all night and you’re ready to wring my neck.” Ronan’s smirking, but it feels like an apology. Gansey wants to shake him for thinking he needs to apologize. 

Instead, he hauls himself to his feet. Reaching for memories of Helen or his parents soothing him after a nightmare, Gansey grips Ronan’s broad shoulder and squeezes.

“Go to bed. Nothing’s going to hurt you, I promise.”

Ronan suddenly looks away. “Not up to you, man.”

“I know. I just wanted to pretend.” 

Carefully, like he’s gentling a spooked animal, he takes hold of Ronan’s bare arms above the bandages. Gansey can feel his pulse there, frantic and alive.

“Go to sleep, Ronan. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Ronan sighs, his grimace relaxing a bit. He’s swaying a little on his feet, and Gansey realizes he never saw him sleep at the hospital.

“Goodnight, man. And thanks.”

“Goodnight. Pleasant dreams.”

Ronan snorts with laughter as he shuts his bedroom door.

Gansey hopes that Ronan claimed all the good dreams, because his are foul and terrifying. He holds Ronan’s shuddering body in the back of the church, watching him bleed out and being unable to stop it. There’s more blood than should be possible, soaking into their clothes and skin and staining the wooden pew. 

He dreams of Ronan asleep in the next room, blood leaking through his clean white bandages. He dreams of Ronan in a padded cell, in a well-guarded hospital ward, in the cold and empty space in Gansey’s bed. And although he’s being watched over, although he’s safe from knives and razors and broken bottles, Ronan’s wounds bleed fresh like stigmata.

But it’s the dream where he stops bleeding, the sluggish throb of his pulse fading to nothing, that makes Gansey take his blankets and move to Ronan’s bedroom floor. 

\--

It makes a strange kind of sense. An encyclopedia could be written on Ronan’s problems with authority, but at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to be the center of his own universe. He has the charisma to attract followers, and the ruthlessness to reject companionship entirely, but he chooses to be a constant presence at Gansey’s side. 

Gansey has a lot of thoughts about Niall and Declan Lynch, and about what exactly Ronan is looking for when he looks at him like that. It’s always a look, occasionally paired with “can you” or “is it okay” or just “please, Gansey.” That _please_ holds something soft and tender that Gansey knows he would die protecting. 

He’ll keep making up rules and giving out rewards as long as it keeps Ronan out of trouble. If that makes Gansey a surrogate father or brother, at least Ronan is getting what he needs from someone. The part of Gansey that feels like he’s taking advantage—and the quieter part that dwells at length on how far Ronan would let him go—is easy to ignore when Ronan comes to him with shaking hands and lost eyes. Gansey would die for him; this is no sacrifice.

\--

In the two years he’s lived there, Gansey has never felt this unsafe at Monmouth. The break-in left him more shaken than he lets on, and it all comes back to lovingly crafted leather wristbands and a pile of fake IDs with Ronan’s exact height and weight on them. Monmouth feels violated, the parameters of their relationship laid bare for anyone to see, and Gansey hates himself for the things he would do to make it stop.

If Kavinsky lays a finger on Ronan tonight, Gansey might actually kill him. It isn’t a feeling he enjoys.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he yells into Ronan’s bedroom as they’re getting dressed. Gansey can’t get his hair to look anything but charmingly floppy. “I just don’t want him using this as an excuse to harass you more.”

“Since when does he need an excuse?” Ronan looks savage as usual, slouching against the doorframe in a black muscle tank, but there’s a nervous energy in his movements that makes Gansey wonder if he has a feeling about the party too. “Anyway, he won’t go too far. He knows I’m yours.”

Gansey freezes. He knows what Ronan is trying to say, but it doesn’t stop his stomach from flipping. The statement is both far too casual and far too serious, and it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Kavinsky’s intentions. 

“If he knew that, we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.” Gansey rakes his hair back one last time and picks his wallet up off the desk. He pauses for a moment, fidgeting with it. “Kavinsky only cares about things he can own. That’s why he’s interested in you. He thinks I own you, and he’d like nothing better than to steal you away from me.”

Ronan snorts, but not before his expression goes dark. “Kavinsky’s never given two shits about you. You’re not his type.” He seems poised to say something else, but instead he pushes past Gansey and into the stairwell. 

“He prefers them blond and anorexic, right?” Gansey says as he sprints down the stairs to catch up.

“Abuse histories preferable,” Ronan says, yanking open the door of the BMW. “Substance issues required.”

With the mood as calm as it’s going to be, they pull out of the lot. Gansey’s mind continues to wander, imagining all the ways he could get Kavinsky to back off if he wasn’t hampered by laws or morals or Ronan’s pride. There’s an awful, animal part of Gansey that feels as if his masculinity is being challenged, like Kavinsky slithered through some hole in his defenses and smeared filthy hands all over Gansey’s things. Gansey feels terribly guilty for thinking of Ronan as a thing, but not enough to stop the surge of adrenaline and testosterone that courses through him as they pull into the fairground. If Kavinsky thinks he can claim Ronan, Gansey hasn’t been clear enough.

He’s unspeakably pleased that Ronan’s fist winds up covered in Kavinsky’s blood.

\--

A couple days after getting the new old Camaro, Gansey opens his desk drawer and finds an unfamiliar object among the EpiPens and school supplies. About five inches in length and as wide as his thumb, it’s carved from clean, white bone. The carvings remind him of Viking gravestones and Irish manuscripts, layers upon layers of symmetrical knots with eyes and snouts and tongues nestled between them. The scale looks entirely wrong, like the design was transposed from a giant stone pillar or arch. Still, it fits smoothly in Gansey’s fist.

He knocks on Ronan’s door and gets a shouted reply. Ronan pulls off his headphones when he sees the object in Gansey’s hand. 

“You asked for something new. Didn’t think the Pig counted.”

Gansey recognizes this as another apology. “Ronan, it’s beautiful.” He turns it around in his hands. “Did you make it, or did it just appear?”

Ronan’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Yes. No. I mean, I was thinking of you when I found it. Hidden edges and moldy old Saxon shit. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was yours.”

Gansey unfolds the blade. It’s made of a strange, dark metal, and the edge curves sinuously up to a foreboding point. It looks utterly fanciful and wickedly sharp. 

“Your brain is an excellent craftsman.” Gansey can’t quite keep the reverence out of his voice. He slides his thumb across the flat edge of the blade, and the metal feels strangely supple against his skin. 

“You try it out yet?” With Ronan’s head tilted back, Gansey can see the vein ticking in his throat. He has an unbidden vision of a blade sliding across that tender spot, of blood soaking down into Ronan’s shirt, and Gansey has to school himself to keep from shuddering.

“Not yet.” He rolls his left sleeve to the elbow. Taking a deep breath to still his hands, Gansey makes a small nick on the inside of his forearm. The knife cuts cleanly, leaving a neat red line with a single drop of blood welling up. The pain throbs in time with his heart. 

“Here, let me.” Ronan has a tissue in his hand, and he’s staring at Gansey’s arm. Gansey lets Ronan take hold of his wrist and press the tissue against the cut. They both watch Gansey’s blood soak into it.

“Well, we know it works,” Gansey says. Ronan offers him a bandage, and he tries to stick it on one-handed, but gives up and hands it back. Ronan seems to press into the wound more than the process demands, his eyes darting from Gansey’s arm to his face and back again.

Gansey carefully tugs his sleeve back down. “Now I can protect myself from burglars.” 

Ronan laughs and puts his headphones back on. “Good old Dick, king of his castle. All you need is some racist paranoia.”

“Those damn Bulgarians.” 

As soon as the door shuts behind him, Gansey takes a deep breath and presses his thumb into the cut on his arm. 

\--

July is off to a dreadful start. Adam is skittish, Blue is grieving, and Ronan won’t let Matthew out of his sight. The absolute last thing Gansey needs is to come home and find Declan’s car in the parking lot. 

They’re already at blows upstairs; he can hear the dull thud of punches landing and Matthew’s shrill voice. He leaps up the stairs and into the apartment, throwing himself between the brothers to push them apart.

“Enough! That’s enough.” Ronan surges against his back, muscles tight with interrupted momentum. Gansey grabs Ronan’s wrist and twists it behind him. Declan wipes the blood from his nose and smears it on his ruined shirt.

“Yeah, hold him back. He might send one of his psycho sadist friends to stuff you in the trunk of a car.”

“He’s not—he wasn’t my friend, you fuckhead.” Ronan’s voice is low and deadly, coming out through clenched teeth. 

“He almost killed Matthew!” Declan kicks the side of Gansey’s mattress, sending it skidding a few inches. “How many people have to die before you realize there are consequences to being so fucking stupid?”

“Hey now.” There’s nothing placating in Gansey’s voice, and the edge there makes Ronan go a tiny bit still. “Declan, it’s time for you to leave. Matthew can choose whether he goes with you.”

Matthew’s wide eyes dart from Gansey to Declan. He takes a few steps to stand next to Ronan. “He’s right, dude. Just go home and take a nap or something.”

Declan starts to laugh, high and hysterical. “Perfect. Fucking perfect. Are you going to be Matthew’s daddy too, you sick fuck?”

Gansey feels like he’s been stabbed. The sound that Ronan makes isn’t really a sound, more of a rumble that comes up through his chest and rattles out with his breath against Gansey’s ear. It makes the twisting pain in Gansey’s stomach shift into something bearable.

He lets go of Ronan’s arm.

Declan is on the floor before he realizes what happened, Ronan’s fist crashing into his face again and again. “Do not,” Ronan pants, “Ever. Talk about him again.”

When Declan seems ready to flip him, Gansey comes over and plants his foot in the middle of Declan’s chest. Ronan stops at once, breathing hard against Gansey’s leg. 

“If I ever see you on my property again,” Gansey says, “I’m not holding him back.” 

Declan chokes out a laugh. His face looks terrible. “That leash isn’t as strong as you think it is.”

Just to make Declan miserable, and encouraged by the pressure of Ronan’s head against his knee, Gansey reaches down and runs a gentle hand over Ronan’s hair. 

“Funny, I think you don’t know shit about shit. Get out of my apartment.”

He pulls Ronan to his feet. Declan stands up and spits a mouthful of blood onto Gansey’s bedspread. Gansey’s hand is still wrapped around Ronan’s bicep, cataloguing the sensations of taut muscle and thudding pulse. Matthew sighs when the door shuts; Ronan does not.

“Go to your room,” Gansey mutters. His voice sounds tired and ineffectual to his own ears, but Ronan obeys, slamming his door so hard that Gansey and Matthew both jump.

“Uh, listen, man.” Matthew is chewing on his lip, his church tie hanging loose around his neck, and for a second he looks like the Ronan Gansey first met. “I don’t know if Declan was just winding you up, but I don’t think you guys are sick. Even if he does call you…”

He blushes, avoiding eye contact. Gansey lets out a tired chuckle.

“Thanks, Matthew. That means a lot. And for the record, he doesn’t call me anything.”

“Oh, thank Christ.” That makes Gansey laugh again, and soon Matthew’s easy, dimpled grin returns in full force. “Listen, I’m going to go do something. Somewhere else. For a couple hours.”

Gansey figures it would be patronizing to ruffle his hair, so he claps Matthew on his broad shoulder. “Thanks, man.”

“Sure thing.” Matthew shuts the door, and Gansey gives himself a moment to breathe, running a hand over his tense jaw.

He finds Ronan standing in the middle of his bedroom, clenching and unclenching his fists. His eyes are screwed shut and his mouth is bloody. He occasionally probes at the split with his tongue, as if to remind himself that it’s there. 

Gansey sends up a very selfish prayer of thanks that his face isn’t as much of a mess as Declan’s.

“Ronan.” It comes out more plaintive than he intends. “Ronan, come here. I’d really like to kiss you.”

“Gay.” Ronan opens his eyes. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

Gansey crashes into him and captures his mouth. In contrast to the hard muscles of his chest, Ronan’s lips are soft and pliant, parting easily for Gansey’s hungry tongue. He lets Gansey lick across the split in his lip, and he makes a gorgeous choked noise when Gansey digs his teeth into it. 

The taste of Ronan’s blood is going to drive him completely mad.

“Gansey, fuck.” Ronan’s eyes are bright and heavy-lidded. “I’ve been fucking waiting for—you have no idea, man, it’s been killing me.”

Gansey leans in until their foreheads touch. “I always thought that knife was too pretty for burglars.”

“Oh God.” Ronan’s voice is shaking. “Gansey, please.”

Leaving the bedroom is torture, but coming back to find Ronan in the same position—head down, hands behind his back—more than makes up for it. Gansey pulls his shirt off and tucks the knife into his pocket. 

“Don’t move unless I tell you to.” He sits on Ronan’s bed. “Don’t speak unless I ask you a question. If you need to stop for any reason, just tell me.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to talk.” Ronan is still facing the door, but Gansey can hear the smirk in his words. He flicks the back of Ronan’s thigh and enjoys his flinch.

“Don’t be a smartass. Turn around.” 

Ronan turns, his head tilted up at an arrogant angle. From where he’s sitting, Gansey can see the whole underside of his throat, and he wonders if it’s intentional, a wolf showing submission to the pack leader. Heat prickles through Gansey’s body.

“Take off everything except your underwear and kneel. Leave the tie, too.”

Ronan’s mouth quirks. He strips with the efficiency of a soldier, uncovering white skin and black hair and the sharp tendrils of his tattoo crawling over his shoulders. Gansey’s skin feels too tight, like something inside him is bursting.

The shirt lands on the floor. The pants follow, leaving Ronan in a necktie and a pair of tight briefs that reveal the outline of his hard cock. Gansey struggles to breathe as Ronan sinks to his knees. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re beautiful on your knees.” Gansey traces the thorny tangle of ink on Ronan’s shoulder. “I wish I could’ve watched you get it. Did you stay still like this with the needle in your skin?”

Ronan shakes his head. “Tried, but it hurt like a motherfucker.”

“I’m sure.” Gansey takes Ronan’s face in his hands. “Will you be still for me when I use my knife?”

Ronan shivers, his pulse beating wildly against Gansey’s fingers. “I’ll try. For you.”

The words make Gansey’s chest ache. He sweeps his thumbs over Ronan’s cheekbones. “Stand up and pull the blankets down. I want you on your back.” 

Ronan prepares the bed as Gansey works his zipper free. “We should put towels down or something,” Ronan says. “So we don’t get blood all over the—so it doesn’t stain the—fuck.”

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. His breathing is loud and arrhythmic. Gansey makes the jump from bloodstained sheets to church pews to a crushed skull on asphalt, and he stumbles over with his pants half undone to pull Ronan into a hug.

“It’s all right, I’m here. Try to breathe for me.” 

He does, a shaky inhale and exhale against Gansey’s neck. “I’m sorry, I just—”

Gansey rubs his back. “Shh. Keep breathing, nice and slow. That’s it.”

Ronan chuckles into Gansey’s skin. “If you back out now, I’ll have to kill you.”

Gansey smiles. “I just don’t want to—well, I do want to hurt you, but I don’t want to damage you irreparably.”

“If there’s enough blood to freak me out, a panic attack is the least of my worries.” Ronan’s fingers rub gently across Gansey’s bare chest. “You could blindfold me.” 

The image makes Gansey flush, but he wants to be careful. He starts loosening Ronan’s tie. “You’d have to trust me even more.”

Ronan’s brow knots in confusion. “Trusting you is the easy part.”

Gansey pulls him in for another bloody kiss. He tosses the knife onto the bed and kicks his pants down, and Ronan stares at him so heatedly that Gansey almost regrets knotting the tie over his eyes. 

Almost.

Ronan sways for a moment, adjusting to the deprivation. His hands are braced on Gansey’s chest. Gansey pets the side of his neck.

“Perfect, that’s it. Stay here while I get things ready.” 

He digs his least favorite towel set and a first aid kit from his Boy Scout days out of the closet. Ronan allows Gansey to maneuver him onto the bed, a process which involves more touching than it probably needs. Ronan’s trust is like a drug, and Gansey is flushed and aching by the time he reaches for the knife.

Gansey waits several heartbeats before flicking it open. Ronan is quiet and focused, compensating for the loss of his vision, and the _snick_ of the metal makes him roll his hips into the air.

“Shh,” Gansey murmurs, running a soothing hand along Ronan’s thigh. “Be good.” He wants to run the blade across every inch of white skin, but he settles for straddling Ronan’s legs and sliding the knife under the waistband of his briefs.

“Will you be heartbroken if I ruin these?”

Ronan shakes his head. His breath hitches as Gansey begins to cuts through the fabric. His cock throbs inches away from the blade, and it leaks pre-come when Gansey presses the flat side against it.

“Not there,” Ronan gasps. His stomach quivers from the effort of not thrusting. “Too much.”

“Okay. Thank you for telling me.” Gansey severs the fabric and gets to work on the other side. “If you weren’t blindfolded, I’d have you lick the blade clean. You’re making a mess.”

Ronan bites his lip. 

With the briefs disposed of, Gansey settles over Ronan’s hips. The feeling of their cocks pressing together is almost unbearably good. He gives one wet, sliding thrust against Ronan’s hip, gasping at the heat that works out from the point of contact. 

With the dull edge of the knife, Gansey traces Ronan’s breastbone from the hollow of his throat to the trail of dark hair on his stomach. Ronan shivers.

“Is it cold? Would you like me to warm it up?”

“Yes and fuck no.”

Gansey presses the side of the blade to Ronan’s nipple. Ronan jerks, and Gansey has to quickly lift the knife to avoid catching flesh.

“Don’t move.” He plants a hand in the middle of Ronan’s chest. Ronan gasps and surges against it before falling still.

“You like that, don’t you?” Gansey doesn’t wait for an answer, just touches the blade to his other nipple. Ronan grunts and pushes against Gansey’s hand. “Next time, I’ll tie you up.”

The metal clasp of the first aid kit is loud in the quiet room. The smell of the antiseptic wipe gives Gansey a rush of memories, and he talks more to distract himself than Ronan. “I love you all flushed like this. You’ve got such sensitive skin. I bet you’ll bleed for me with just a scratch.”

He finds a spot high on Ronan’s pectoral where the flush is pronounced. Holding him down, Gansey slides the blade over it with just enough pressure to break the skin. Ronan hisses between his teeth. Gansey can feel the skin catch and give under harsh metal, blood welling up around the blade. His cock pulses against his hip.

Ronan’s heart jackrabbits under Gansey’s hand. He makes a wonderful keening noise when Gansey runs his finger along the edge of the cut, his hips jerking desperately. It makes Gansey’s own skin itch. “How does it feel?”

“Hot.” Ronan sounds totally wrecked. “Hot and heavy. I can feel my pulse there. Just fucking touch it again, please?”

Pressing against it draws more blood to the surface. It’s slick and dark against Ronan’s pale skin, and for a moment Gansey’s stomach twists from the remembered stickiness of it, rusty and thick where it had congealed on his clothes. He takes a deep breath and focuses on the bright, fresh red, on Ronan’s shallow breathing, on the faint thrum of Ronan’s pulse under his fingers. This isn’t a nightmare because Gansey is in control, and he won’t let anything bad happen to Ronan. He smears blood on Ronan’s nipple and licks it off. 

This is how Gansey pays reverence. He marks the beautiful lines of Ronan’s body in red and rubs it onto him like war paint. Sometimes he doesn’t break the skin, leaving it a raised, angry pink that makes Ronan whine in the back of his throat. Sometimes Gansey stops to lick the blood off his fingers, or rub it into their cocks, or smear it against Ronan’s lips. It’s savage and filthy and Gansey has never felt closer to the divine. 

When Ronan gets close, Gansey presses his thigh between Ronan’s legs and the knife against Ronan’s throat. Ronan gasps and tilts his head back, his stubble rasping against the blade. 

“I promise I’ll keep you safe,” Gansey says. “Do you trust me?”

“Always.” There’s a scratch on Ronan’s neck where the knife caught it when he was thrashing around. Gansey trusts himself not to slit Ronan’s throat because every molecule in his body is tuned to Ronan, to the blood welling from his neck and the pulse banging against Gansey’s knuckles and the rhythm of his hips grinding against Gansey’s thigh.

“Then come.”

Ronan does, loud and messy. Gansey will have finger-shaped bruises on his arms tomorrow, and he tells Ronan to squeeze harder while he jerks off onto his stomach. 

Ronan winces when Gansey’s come lands on him. “Fuck, that stings. What happened to Mr. Safety First?”

“Sorry. Got caught up in the moment.” Gansey crawls over and pulls down the blindfold. Ronan blinks, fuzzy and disoriented, but as soon as his eyes focus, he smiles so softly that Gansey’s throat tightens. 

“Hey.” Ronan runs his fingers through Gansey’s hair. “You okay?”

“I just cut you to ribbons and you want to know if _I’m_ okay?” His skin feels tacky with drying blood and come. The desire for cleanliness wars with the desire to burrow into Ronan’s neck and sleep for an hour.

Ronan smacks the side of his head. “Martyrdom isn’t sexy. You’re not Saint Sebastian.” With a lot of wincing, he pulls himself into a sitting position and reaches for a wipe from the first aid kit. He picks up the knife and begins cleaning it off. 

“Why?” Gansey asks. “Would you like me tied up and stuck full of arrows?” 

“Maybe. You are a filthy masochist.” Ronan folds the knife shut, takes out another wipe, and reaches for Gansey’s hands. His touch is cool and gentle and refreshing.

“Have we gone from Saint Sebastian to Mary Magdalene?” 

“You’re thinking of Mary of Bethany, not Mary Magdalene.” He cleans Gansey’s wrists and forearms, well above the bloodstains. His hands are steady and more careful than usual. “Besides, you get to be Saint Irene in a minute. You can patch me up and rescue me from the brink of death. Doesn’t that shit get you off?”

Gansey remembers watching Ronan change his bandages through the open bathroom door, and feeling a sickening combination of heartache and desire. He kisses Ronan’s palm.

“You know me too well. Lie down.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have been looking for an excuse to write D/s for these two since The Raven Boys, so your prompts made my day. I hope this scratches your itch. Special thank you to my rockstar betas.
> 
> THIS FIC CONTAINS: lots and lots of blood, references to attempted suicide, graphic depictions of life-threatening blood loss, graphic depictions of cutting for sexual pleasure, brief mentions of ageplay/daddy kink, heavy sadism and masochism, consensual power exchange


End file.
